Motive for Manafort meddling a mystery
Special counsel Robert Mueller wrapped up his investigation without answering one of the key questions in the entire Russia saga: Why did ex-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort share reams of internal polling data with a suspected Russian spy?
Previous court filings have established Manafort forked over internal survey info to his ex-business partner and alleged Russian intelligence asset Konstantin Kilimnik at least once before the 2016 election, and Mueller’s extensive report released Thursday provided additional details about the exchanges.
However, despite confirming the data all but certainly ended up in the hands of a Russian oligarch with close ties to President Vladimir Putin, Mueller ultimately did not get to the bottom of why it was shared with Kilimnik or what it was used for.
“Because of questions about Manafort’s credibility and our limited ability to gather evidence on what happened to the polling data after it was sent to Kilimnik, the Office could not assess what Kilimnik (or others he may have given it to) did with it,” Mueller wrote in his report.
Top Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann called the data transfer the “heart” of the special counsel’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and possible coordination with the Trump campaign.
“This goes to the larger view of what we think is going on, and what we think is the motive here,” Weissmann said at a court hearing in February, according to a heavily redacted transcript. “This goes, I think, very much to the heart of what the special counsel’s office is investigating.”
Manafort began sending polling data to Kilimnik in April or early May 2016, using his former business associate Rick Gates as a middle-man, according to Mueller’s report.
Much of the data had been compiled by veteran Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio, who had been hired by the Trump campaign, Mueller said.
Gates would send the info via encrypted messages and then delete the messages once Kilimnik had confirmed receipt, according to Mueller.
Mueller said Gates was under the impression that Kilimnik would turn over the data to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire who has been sanctioned by the U.S. government and is considered one of the oligarchs in Putin’s closest circle of advisers.
Manafort owed millions of dollars to Deripaska at the time and Gates said his boss thought the data handover could be “good for business” and essentially amount to paying back his loan.
Neither Manafort nor Gates said they had any idea what the data was eventually used for.
But the flow of information continued for months, with Gates “periodically” forwarding internal data to Kilimnik, according to Mueller.
Matters came to a head in August 2016, when Manafort and Gates met with Kilimnik at an upscale cigar bar in Midtown.
During the secretive sitdown, Manafort briefed Kilimnik on recent polling, the state of the upcoming election and the Trump campaign’s strategies in “battleground” states, such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Minnesota, according to Mueller.